Brand new laptop-want to keep it 'nice'.

debitcardmayhem

macman wrote: »

And don't let the dog use it...

But cats are fine ....<

Emuchops

Thanks for your replies. It was the dog playing Solitare and watching !!!!!! simultaneously that broke it so he is now confined to the Dr Kawashima's Brain trainer.
It was either Currys or Comet-I can't tell the difference they are the Jedward of electrical retail. So moved by the salesman was I, that I had to vent on the blog (which incidentally was late due to the mishap, thereby disappointing literally a handful of readers).

bluesnake

you could look at Zsoft Uninstaller - it's free too?

Enterprise_1701C

What closed meant was, when you start it up at the moment, it almost certainly asks if you wish to create recovery discs. It was the first thing I did with this lappie and it does take a while, but it means that if you have a problem and have to wipe the disc or replace it, then you can put the computer back in the state it was in when you first got it, software wise at least.

If it does not ask you to do so, assuiming it is Windows 7, just put in the search box (when you press start button the search box comes up) "create recovery discs" and it will come up with instructions on how to do it.

bluesnake

once it is working and configured, back it up again using http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx or clonezilla - for recovery. Recovery disk mention in other posts are still necessary, and as often contain extra, special drivers plus other magical things.

Driveimage xml is another good free product, but to recover from a catastrophic failure you need a bootable windows PE disk with the correct sata/scsi/disk drivers, and if anything on this paragraph does not make sense to you, this this is probably not the way for you to go.